Samurai

Samurai Slot Review

Twenty-five free spins is the top award in Samurai, and every one of them comes with a multiplier that can climb to 10x. SmartSoft Gaming released this Japanese-themed video slot on 19 October 2019, long before the studio became better known for crash and instant titles such as the Crash Duel X demo. Samurai is a far more traditional game: five reels, a red dragon wild that stacks on the right-hand side, a wave scatter for the bonus, and rolling reels that keep a winning spin going. The Samurai slot rewards patience more than speed, and the bonus round carries most of its appeal.

Theme, Art & Sound

The setting is a forest in bloom, with sakura blossom and lush greenery around the reels. The look is classic Japan rather than the neon, cyber-samurai style some newer releases go for, and the artwork stays calm enough that the symbols are easy to read at a glance.

The characters do the storytelling. The samurai himself tops the paytable, with a lady and an elder just under him. The rest of the reel set is made of objects you would expect in a period drama: a blossom tree, a Japanese tablet, a mountain, a bowl of rice, a fish and a mask. Over all of it sits the red dragon wild, the one symbol that changes how a spin plays out.

Anyone who enjoys the warrior theme with heavier maths behind it can compare Push Gaming's Samurai's Katana, which runs a 5x4 grid, 20 paylines and a 10,000x top prize.

Symbols & Payouts

Payouts below are for five of a kind, expressed as multiples of your total stake.

The spread is narrow. Five samurai pay just over six times what five masks pay, so no single symbol carries the base game. What makes a spin worthwhile is the rolling reel chain after a win, plus the stacked wilds on reels 3, 4 and 5 that can join several lines at once.

RTP & Key Specs

Samurai returns 97% over the long run in our version, a figure that sits comfortably above the 96% many video slots settle on. In practical terms, $100 cycled through the game is expected to hand back $97 on average across a very large number of spins. The house edge is the other 3%, so 200 spins at the $0.50 minimum carry an expected cost of about $3. Short sessions swing well away from that average in both directions, and whether yours lands above or below it depends almost entirely on the bonus round.

For a newer take on the same setting with a slightly higher return, BGaming's Sweet Samurai pairs a candy look with 432 paylines and a 4,500x cap.

Samurai Bonus Features

Red Dragon Wilds

The dragon substitutes for every regular symbol and appears in stacks on reels 3, 4 and 5. Two stacks side by side on reels 3 and 4 mean any samurai or lady on the first two reels is suddenly in play.

Free Spins

Three wave scatters anywhere on the reels start the round with 15 free spins. Four give you 20 and five give you 25. The round cannot be retriggered, so the count you start with is the count you get. That makes the opening scatter total the most important moment of the bonus. With the spin count locked, the multiplier is the only thing that can grow inside the round, and it grows only through chains. Fifteen spins with two long chains can easily outpay 25 spins of isolated hits.

Rolling Reels Multiplier

Every win removes the paying symbols and drops new ones into the gaps, which can chain into a second or third win from the same spin. During free spins each consecutive roll pushes a multiplier one step higher, up to 10x. Long chains are therefore worth far more than frequent single wins. SmartSoft likes multipliers as a core idea across its catalogue, and the Tower X game takes that idea to an instant-win format with prizes up to 5,000x.

Bonus Buy

If you do not want to wait for three scatters, the bonus can be bought for 120x your stake. At the $0.50 minimum that is $60 for a guaranteed round. It pays to test the purchase in the demo first, because a short round with no long chains can return a fraction of the price.

How to Play

The demo runs the same reels with play credits, which is a sensible way to see how often the wave scatters turn up before any real coins go in. For real play, pick a stake from the bet panel, starting at $0.50, and press spin. Wins pay left to right, and rolling reels take care of themselves after each one. When three or more wave scatters land, the free spins round begins on its own. If you would rather go straight there, the bonus buy option takes you in directly.

Deposits work in a range of coins on BetFury, and our ETH online casino page covers how Ethereum funding works if that is your currency of choice. Load Samurai, set a stake you can hold through a few dry spells, and play until the waves finally line up for the bonus.